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Tag Archives: Steamboy

As everybody knows (or should know) Steamboy is a film by Ootomo Katsuhiro released in 2004 and that took almost 10 years in the making because of the incredible level of quality demanded by the director and also because of financial problems. Finally was released and it was worth the wait: I found it amazing. Actually in 2004 I spent 3 months in Japan travelling north to south and I made my schedule considering 2 things: opening of Steamboy and the opening of Hauru no Ugoku Shiro by Miyazaki. It turned out ok, and as I set my foot in Narita I went straight to Yurakucho where they were showing Steamboy. Great way to start a trip!

So this books is all about the artwork of the film, and what art! The backgrounds, supervised and many created by the amazing Kimura Shinji, are just incredible. The quality and level of detail is just out of this world. Also in the film, the 3D integration is still the best I have seen in any animated movie.

The Art of Steamboy is a pretty thick hardcover coffee table book and it shows, I believe, all the background art, lots of elements and film stills, some examples of composition and much more.

We also get concept art and some line art and layouts. Everything is shown in chronological order, as things happen in the movie.

The book has a lot of text but it is all in japanese. There are interviews and some information section about the artists at the end of this big book (272 pages)

Finally you can see the clean (no text superimposed) backgrounds of the end credits scenes, showing us the further adventures of Steamboy, they are quite amazing, both paintings and situations!

So in the end a really great book, definitely recommended. It is out of print now but it pops up from time to time on eBay or amazon.co.jp.

As a bonus, here I bring you some pics of the Steamboy cinema brochure. Quite nice too!

Hope you enjoyed. Next time let´s go for something more american style!